On Wednesday evening in an Oakland neighborhood storefront, locals crammed around a bin of used vinyl, flipping through the fame of jazz gone by: the likes of Count Basie and Sonny Criss, Art Blakey and Cannonball Adderley.

The place could have been mistaken for a vintage record store. And that was exactly the idea.

“It’s kind of surreal, isn’t it?” The low voice of author Michael Chabon came over a microphone, welcoming more than 200 guests at this unusual event to introduce his latest novel, “Telegraph Avenue.”

Indeed, what would otherwise have been a typical book reading and signing for the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Berkeley author was elevated into Chabon’s world of make believe with trappings of the fictional Brokeland Records shop — the central locale in the book — temporarily superimposed on the very real Diesel bookstore on College Avenue, its windows draped in red-and-yellow Brokeland logos that mimic the book jacket, and bins filled with more 1,000 classic record titles — all for sale, and set up as the main display through the front door.

The records, authentic gems from the past, were courtesy of Berigan Taylor of Berigan’s Records and CDs, whose old shop was the inspiration for Brokeland.

“It’s a case where reality meets art which met reality some time ago at Berigan’s Records,” joked Bay Area author Dave Eggers, who introduced Chabon.

To be sure, the place is the thing. The critically praised “Telegraph Avenue” is Chabon’s first major work in five years, and considered one of his best works since “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” won the Pulitzer in 2001. And while it’s a journey through a few weeks in his characters’ lives — a couple of longtime pals, one black and one Jewish, whose Brokeland shop faces impending doom as a mega store moves in down the street — the book is also heavily settled on a sense of situation, of place, of neighborhood. Locals hang out at Brokeland, talk over life’s troubles, all while Chabon stirs up the flavor of the multiethnic communities along the Telegraph corridor, name-dropping local favorites with an affectionate nostalgia, places like Moe’s Books and Neldam’s Danish Bakery and the decadent deliciousness of its signature Dream of Cream cake.

“This book took me a very long time to write,” said Chabon, 49, sporting his trademark scruffy beard and glasses as rapt Chabonians squeezed in five-deep rows to hear him. “It was 1999 when I walked into Berigan’s and the initial seeds were planted. I actually came up with the idea for a TV show and developed it and wrote a script for the pilot, but it didn’t go anywhere and I laid it aside. So I really feel like this is a culmination for me.”

Chabon said he chose Telegraph and the surrounding area because, well, it’s where he lives.

“I kept living here, having experiences, talking to people,” he said of the area he describes in the book as “the ragged fault line where the urban plates of Berkeley and Oakland subducted.”

“It had been such a long time since I’d written in the near present and more or less in consensus reality,” he said. “So instead of researching how people communicated to a friend in Alaska — did they send letters on sled dogs? Were there special postmarks involved? — it was relief to know how things are done and to write about the familiar.”

The familiar was definitely the draw for reader Peter Michaels of Oakland, who has a personal connection to the Telegraph area and wanted to see if Chabon got it right. “I was intimately involved in a record store — Leopold’s Records, which was a nonprofit up by the Cal campus, long before Michael Chabon was born,” Michaels said, eagerly flipping through his copy of the book to find the reference. “So I’m curious to see how faithful he was to that spot.”

Berigan Taylor was delighted to discover Chabon’s authentic prose when it came to his old record store — the shop on Claremont Avenue that planted the seed for Chabon.

“He popped in way back in the ’90s and apparently hung out for a while,” Taylor said. “I didn’t know it or even know who he was. He didn’t introduce himself. But he clearly absorbed the feel of it as being a local hangout, heard some conversations, people talking about everything under the sun. He totally got it.”

Chabon himself has a huge collection of vinyl records, mostly jazz, and plays them while he writes. “The first record I ever bought — a 45, because they were cheaper — was the Grand Funk Railroad cover of ‘The Loco-Motion,'” he said. “And the first LP I bought with my own money was Queen’s ‘Night at the Opera,’ which I still have.”

Someone dared ask about his trademark use of complex, circuitous sentences in his novels, often taking the readers on detours to the dictionary. He offered a jovial response: “I love it when I’m reading and I encounter a word I don’t know and I have to go look it up,” he said. “That’s some of the pleasure of reading for me, and I want to share that part of the experience.”

The pop-up Brokeland store will only be up through Friday. Diesel books is at 5433 College Ave., Oakland. “Telegraph Avenue” is already on its way to becoming a movie, to be produced by Scott Rudin, who turned Chabon’s second novel, “Wonder Boys,” into the 2000 film of the same name.